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[FreakyCheeseMan]

So, thinking more about syndromes, and how cool it would be to have contagious diseases, and I think I came up with an easy way.

So, right now we have cough blood and vomit blood, right? Add a few new syndrome conditions, as follows:

Expel Bile- periodically the infected creature will vomit or otherwise expel a smear of infected material- just some liquid you could add into the raws, which would have the "infect on contact" deal to it.

Infect Blood- this one might be harder to program, but it would add the poison tags to the creature in question's blood, so if it got spilled, it would spread the disease that way.

Cough- the infected creature expels a cloud of infected gas at random intervals, letting it spread that way.

I *think* that's all we'd need to include fully infectious diseases in Dwarf Fortress...

[Coidzure Dreams]

Hmm, those vectors do seem to about cover it.

Maybe do the bile such that it goes onto things the dwarf handles/operates such that they require cleaning or have a chance of spreading the disease.  Having certain vectors fade with time would be good as well, for modeling purposes at least.

I mean, eventually there's not going to be anything on that doorknob even if it's not wiped off by other dorfs touching it or being cleaned.

But, as is, doesn't seem like it'd be too much more to add in that bit more.  So it'd be a welcome part to the evolution of infectious diseases in DF.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Come to think of it, expel bile and cough are the same thing, you just need to change the melting point of the bile.

[sweitx]

A rought system just need 2 states.
Gas and liquid.
Expel disease gas handles coughing.
Expel disease liquid handles puking, bleeding, pus, etc.
For simplicity purposes, each disease gas/liquid only has a percentage chance to infecting another dwarf (from 1% for something that may kill you instantly, or 99% like the Spanish flu, that'll still kill you fairly quickly).

[Warlord255]

Isn't grime (sweat) a contaminant right now, generated by work? I'd think that would need to be a method of spreading disease through lack of cleanliness.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Almost everything is already in place... Wouldn't be a perfect system, but all you need to add to get a perfectly functional disease system is to add an "expel liquid x", which I'm guessing would only be a few lines of code different from "cough up blood."

[Pilsu]

Disease is not going to work as long as water is a miraculous cleaning agent. Not even cholera can exist.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Disease is not going to work as long as water is a miraculous cleaning agent. Not even cholera can exist.

Um, what? If you engineered your fortress enough it might fight against the bile and blood methods, but the only way water would stop cough-spread diseases as I described would be if you drowned the infected dwarves in it.

[Randomonioum]

STDs - Spore transmitted diseases. Every member of the opposite gender has a chance of catching the disease upon becoming pregnant.

[Pilsu]

Disease is not going to work as long as water is a miraculous cleaning agent. Not even cholera can exist.

Um, what? If you engineered your fortress enough it might fight against the bile and blood methods, but the only way water would stop cough-spread diseases as I described would be if you drowned the infected dwarves in it.

Disease system that doesn't allow something as simple as contaminated water is fundamentally worthless and would need to be replaced eventually anyway.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Disease is not going to work as long as water is a miraculous cleaning agent. Not even cholera can exist.

Um, what? If you engineered your fortress enough it might fight against the bile and blood methods, but the only way water would stop cough-spread diseases as I described would be if you drowned the infected dwarves in it.

Disease system that doesn't allow something as simple as contaminated water is fundamentally worthless and would need to be replaced eventually anyway.

It's no less realistic than a brewing system that doesn't require water, pets that don't require food and mines that can't cave in if they're supported by a column of soap, but I doubt you would claim any of those things are worthless.

Secondly, what I'm proposing is an easily-added placeholder. If it doesn't cover every type of disease, that's too bad, but it doesn't lessen the value of the still-quite-decent infection system we'd be getting in the meantime. Sometime, we'll probably find a way to handle the complexities of infected water (and believe me, there are plenty), and when that happens we can have cholera. In the meantime, we can still enjoy our flu.

[Footkerchief]

Isn't grime (sweat) a contaminant right now, generated by work? I'd think that would need to be a method of spreading disease through lack of cleanliness.

Grime is not currently a true contaminant, no:

Since dwarves now sweat, does that mean that they will potentially leave a trail of sweat, or does it only attach itself to bodyparts like water does now?

If by "sweat" you mean the "open-wound-infection-chance-enhancing grime" mentioned in the dev log, I don't think it'll actually drip off the body, even if it's implemented as a secretion, which I'm not sure of.  Although I suppose the grime secreted by their feet could work its way through their shoes (because the game still doesn't distinguish between the inside and outside of clothing, AFAIK) and make contact with the ground that way, so... maybe yes?  Basically I have no idea, but there's some food for thought!

The grime is a special thing not stored as an actual contaminant, since it's supposed to represent near-microscopic level stuff.  So it does nothing neat.  Sweat itself (as linked to temperature control/exertion, say) is something I said I wouldn't be doing yet in the dev log, and that's probably still true.  It's pretty easy to adapt, but there are lots of little easy things I don't have time to do.

[Pilsu]

It's no less realistic than a brewing system that doesn't require water, pets that don't require food and mines that can't cave in if they're supported by a column of soap, but I doubt you would claim any of those things are worthless.

Secondly, what I'm proposing is an easily-added placeholder. If it doesn't cover every type of disease, that's too bad, but it doesn't lessen the value of the still-quite-decent infection system we'd be getting in the meantime. Sometime, we'll probably find a way to handle the complexities of infected water (and believe me, there are plenty), and when that happens we can have cholera. In the meantime, we can still enjoy our flu.

We don't need more pointless placeholders that need to be removed and redone soon enough anyway.

If you just throw it in, dwarves would probably interrupt their work every time they sneeze and then you have to fix that and all the other bugs that result. It's not worth coding time to half-ass it.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

We don't need more pointless placeholders that need to be removed and redone soon enough anyway.

If you just throw it in, dwarves would probably interrupt their work every time they sneeze and then you have to fix that and all the other bugs that result. It's not worth coding time to half-ass it.

"Pointless" -well, besides having a perfectly decent, fun method for the spread of infection diseases- a fairly accurate one at that, based on expelled germs, which could be significantly counteracted by cleaning- we could also begin preliminary testing of how DF will work with diseases, so that when and if a more complicated system is needed, some testing will already be done.

Secondly, we already *have* the effects I described, in terms of what dwarves actually do or get interrupted by- all I'm proposing is let the existing conditions contribute to the spread of disease, and add in a gaseous one.

As for programming time and bugs- the whole reason I proposed it this way is that it would be very easy to code. The vast majority of what's needed already exists in game, with the current poisons selection. The *only change that would really be needed would be to copy-and-paste existing "cough blood" code, and cause it to expel a custom material created in the RAWS instead. From there, existing code can handle everything.

Finally, the only support you've given for this being half-assed is that it can't handle waterbourne infections, which, as stated, would require additional code for mixing liquids (something Toady has mentioned as difficult in many of the talks). Once such becomes available, the system I proposed could certainly work with that- if bile is expelled into a water source it mixes in, and dwarves exposed to the water function as if exposed to the bile, by some mechanism. So, I guess I retract my previous statement- this doesn't need to be a placeholder at all, it could in fact be a perfectly functional long-term system.

[Pilsu]

And once you have your blood spewing, then what? Dwarves will just keep working and lounging around meeting areas, vomiting blood on each other. HUUURUGRHGLNLBLARBLRLGLLBLBLBLBL. Oh whoops, my bad! What, isolation? Basic group protection? Medical treatment? Nah, can't do that, Toady McCain left the medical care system half-assed so I guess I have no choice but to stand here, infinitely expelling bile out of every orifice on everyone. Hope you don't mind, I was never the same since I ate that bag of holding.